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Iran has made dramatic progress in its ballistic missile
programs over the past year, unveiling three new missiles it claims are
already in production, including an innovative design that could be a
“game-changer” if used against U.S. aircraft carriers, an Israeli expert
widely considered one of the world’s top authorities on Iranian missile
programs says.

Also significant were three unannounced tests of longer-range missiles
most experts believe were designed to carry a nuclear warhead.

In the past, Iran has announced all of its missile tests, often with
great fanfare, even when they were a failure, said Uzi Rubin, the father
of Israel’s “Arrow” anti-missile program.

One of the unannounced missile tests involved a variant of the Shahab-3,
which has been successfully test-fired many times since it was first
flown in 1998 and is now in active deployment with Revolutionary Guards
Air Force units.

Because the missile has been tested successfully so many times, Rubin
believes failure was not why the longer-range missile tests were kept
quiet. “I believe it was policy,” he told a breakfast meeting on Capitol
Hill hosted by the National Defense University Foundation.

The latest United Nations Security Council resolution imposing sanctions
on Iran, which passed in June 2010, expressly forbids Iran from
conducting tests of “nucl... >>>